Hamas making feature film on Israeli soldier’s captivity
哈瑪斯正拍攝以軍被俘影片

Head of the Hamas government Ismail Haniyeh waves outside his office in Gaza City on April 21.哈馬斯領導人伊斯梅爾‧哈尼亞四月二十一日在其位於加薩的辦公室外與民眾揮手致意。

Photo: Reuters照片：路透

A young Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants and held for five years before being traded for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners is the subject of an ambitious low-budget film being made by his captors.

The fate of Gilad Shalit, a corporal captured in a deadly cross-border raid when he was just 19, transfixed Israel for years as his captivity in an unknown location challenged what most Israelis see as the state’s sacred duty to bring its soldiers home.

For the Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza, however, his capture and eventual exchange for more than 1,000 prisoners was a triumph for the “resistance,” an epic worthy of a blockbuster feature — even if produced on a shoestring budget.

A shortage of funds has drastically slowed the production, and even its director said it may not live up to the high-quality epic envisioned.

Entitled Fleeting Illusion, the 90-minute film promises revelations about Shalit’s capture and top-secret captivity “about which neither Shalit nor the resistance have spoken before,” said director and screenwriter Majed Jundiyeh.

The initial budget for the film, produced by the Hamas government’s culture ministry, was slated at US$2.5 million, but Jundiyeh eventually had to settle for a frugal US$320,000. “It could show in the (film’s) quality,” he admitted.